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From: "James E. Hopper" <hopperj@macconnect.com>
Subject: Re: Ada95 speed
Date: 1999/06/01
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In article <3753DA33.F2E088A0@gte.net>, Clifford J. Nelson
<cnelson9@gte.net> wrote:

> 
> I haven't been programming micro computers for the last ten years. I have
> been using Mathematica since about 1989. See:
> http://forum.swarthmore.edu/epigone/geometry-research/brydilyum
> 
> From 1976 to 1989 I programmed a few micro computers and I remember just
> storing the result of some computations in memory, and then setting the video
> pointer to that area of memory. It took a few micro seconds to display the
> result of the computations. All my experience with desk top computers
> contradicts yours. They were very easy to program efficiently. Now that I
> have something to program I find that the computers don't live up to
> expectations anymore.
> 
>     Cliff Nelson

you can do the same thing with the mac if you know what your are doing,
in fact its pretty transparent.  what i did on my version a couple
years ago is just what the gentleman with the pc pointed out, i created
an array, stored results in it, blitted it to the screen.  the blit
took a few milliseconds.  the entire display process was similarly
fast.  if i wanted to get faster yet, i could have allocated my array
on the video card like you are suggesting you could do with old micros,
and then you even save the milliseconds for the blit.  just because its
not obvious to the most unqualified observer doesnt make it that hard. 
mac programmers have been doing this kind of thing for years from 12
year olds on up.

i HAVE spent the last 25 years programming everthing from your micros,
to desktop machines to super computers.  your point has NO validity in
my experience.  if you know what you are doing, programs worked faster
then as they do now, if you didnt they worked slower.  

you seem to want to compare a time when you knew what you were doing
(using micros) to a time when you know far less using desktop machines. 
thats not a fair comparision.  i know for a fact that only people who
knew a lot about programming could get the old micros to do anythign
useful.  a mathemitician or physisist or other tech specialist who
tried to use them tended to bounce hard unless they spent a lot of time
studying them.  

given that i am one of those self same physicists who spent a great
deal of time as a grad student learning to use the old 8 bit single
board computers (while watching my professors fail at it) i know what i
am talking about.

jim